Ukrainian Competition: Selection #3

Through the eyes of 8-year-old Polly, the film follows a family traveling to the countryside amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. Even though the parents try to hold on to a sense of normalcy, cruelty and violence still find their way into Polly’s fragile childhood.

Two sisters meet in a city café. One of them, carefree and cheerful, takes the other on a motorcycle ride to the forest. The girls climb a gloomy sandy slag heap. They spend the night by a campfire near a body of water that resembles a fragment of the underworld. Their conversations seem strange: about shrimp farming, death, and a mysterious switch that can determine whether what they’re experiencing is a dream or reality.

On a warm fall day, a construction worker decides to have a lunch break, a young girl takes care of her elderly grandmother, a film director tries to edit his documentary footage.

For the first time, Slava spends a whole day with her father, Roman, who is home on a short leave from the war. They go to another city to return a pricy carpet Roman bought to Slava as a gift and try to bridge the gap that formed between them during his eight-year service. Suddenly Slava finds herself in need to figure out who this stranger her dad has become.

In one of the hamlets, the orchards started to bloom. Sonia is hurrying to a date. She is about to undergo initiation into adulthood through her first sexual experience. But the frost is coming and it can kill the blossom.